click to enlarge 
Courtesy CPT
'Funny, Like an Abortion,' through May 11 at CPT
Sometimes you see a play listed and wonder what the title is all about.
That's not the case with Funny, Like an Abortion, the play now at Cleveland Public Theatre that you must see—emphasis on must. While the title is direct and easily understood, it belies the subtlety of the funny script by Rachel Bublitz and the inspired performances by two actors under the direction of Paige Conway.
The script of this play compares favorably to the casually horrifying film "The Zone of Interest," which recently won Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. In "Zone," the family of a Nazi prison camp commandant goes about their lives in their comfy house on the grounds of Auschwitz, while only steps away innocent Jews are being massacred. It is chilling to the bone.
Now, imagine "The Zone of Interest" with a laugh track. That's what you have in Funny, Like an Abortion," except in this case the Jews are replaced with all women in the U.S. of child-bearing age, and the concentration camp is replaced with a projected near-future America that denies medical care to pregnant women undergoing life-threatening pregnancies.
In other words, it's about us in a couple years if the Supreme Court continues its march back to the 19th century, aided by a man who may be re-elected as President. Are you laughing yet?
Well, you will be once you put yourself in the capable hands of director Paige Conway and the two actors who make this script come boisterously alive with a mini-trampoline and music and juggling and marionette make-up. It all feels like a wacky treat until the trick is revealed.
It all begins with Monroe, a young woman who is in the frenzied process of getting ready for a party at her tiny apartment. She is setting out about 20 gaily decorated gift bags on the floor, and you assume that there's going to be a big, fun bash with lots of people.
But the only invitee is Monroe's bestie girlfriend Jade, who is soon informed that Monroe is pregnant with a child she does not want. The gift bags each contain one supposed "treatment" for ending a pregnancy. Turns out, it's an "At-Home Abortion Party," and Monroe is intent on getting it done in the next couple hours.
In the Bublitz script, all the initial horrors for women living in a country where they are denied autonomy over their bodies has long since passed. It is like the scene in "Zone," when the commandant is enjoying an evening cigarette outdoors while a crematorium chimney glows and belches smoke in the background. He pays no attention; it is an average day.
So it is with Monroe and Jade, who now live in a world where their womb has more rights than they do. The examples of living in an authoritarian, anti-democratic homeland are dealt out slowly, making them banal and matter-of-fact. Examples: Jade pities Monroe for her tiny salary as a pre-school teacher while Jade evidently does much better as a barista. Libraries have, of course, been scoured of all challenging volumes. And Jade is only able to access banned birth control medications by regularly blowing her male OB/GYN.
This dystopian hellscape is accompanied by almost non-stop laughter thanks to the clever script and two marvelous performances. Andrea de la Fuente is consistently amusing and frequently hilarious as she buzzes around the set, literally bouncing off walls as she tries to solve her pregnancy problem. As her gal-pal Jade, Maggie Adler is perfectly modulated as the "straight man" to Monroe's high-energy explosiveness, creating her own laughs. All this is monitored by Monroe's creepy Alexa-like device that answers questions and...listens.
Director Conway shows how close the two women are by literally putting them in touch with each other as they curl into and alongside each other in a series of friendly cuddles and trust falls. Meanwhile, they explore the various pregnancy "cures" in the bags. These mythical, ineffective and possibly lethal treatments include ingesting a small dose of Drano or large amounts of ginger tea, Vitamin C, cinnamon, and castor oil. Then there's the inevitable device: the infamous wire coat hanger.
Huge kudos go to the all-female creative production team, including scenic designer Laura Carlson Tarantowski's colorful wire hangers parading across a faux proscenium in bright profusion.
In "The Zone of Interest," the commandant family's cosseted life is curdled by a soundtrack of daily and hourly gunshots, smoke and screams nearby. In Funny, Like an Abortion, any current complacency about the erosion of abortion rights is haunted by real news reports of women suffering a traumatic pregnancies who are told by hospitals in some states to go bleed in their cars and return when they're on the brink of death, so maybe they can receive medical care.
Are we laughing yet?
Funny, Like an Abortion
Through May 11 at Cleveland Public Theatre, 6415 Detroit Avenue, cptonline.org, 216-631-2727.
Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
